Battlezone was a truly unforgettable game from the early days of the arcades, that saw you in control of a tank in a 3D battle against enemy vehicles and space ships, set in a dali-esque landscape of cubes and pyramids.
Battlezone Arcade ScreenshotBattlezone used wireframe vector graphics technology, the same technology that was used in the classic Asteroids, and perfected in the original Star Wars Arcade game. Rather than using a matrix of dots on the screen to make up an image, as used in more common “raster” screen technology, vector screens drew lines directly onto the screen using the cathode ray. The phosphor on the screen glowed just long enough for the line to appear solid and the ray had a chance to redraw the next frame, hence the slight flicker associated with the technology. Due to framerate issues it was impossible to draw solid blocks of colour, hence the characteristic wireframe look to all vector games.
Whereas Asteroids was a 2D experience, Battlezone cretaed a 3D world where objects were continually redrawn based on the relative position of the tank, allowing you to drive towards and past them. Through clever use of parallax scrolling, where wireframe 3D objects in the foreground moved at different speeds to the mountains in the background, the Battlezone playfield also had a sense of depth and distance.
Battlezone Arcade Cabinet
The control system was unique in that you had two parallel joysticks which controlled the two tank tracks, so pushing both forwards moved you forwards, push one to turn left or right, or opposite ways for a fast turn. The cabinet also featured a periscope-like hole through which you viewed the screen. This combined with the 3d had the effect of making the game very immersive, for a while you really were driving a tank.
The trick was to use the terrain to hide behind objects whilst waiting for the enemy to drift into your sights. To help with positioning you had a radar that showed the location of enemies, and due to the slow pace of the tanks, you often found yourself in a race with your opponent to rotate to the correct firing position and get your shot in first – too early on the trigger and you might miss, too late and you would be hit. Being shot yourself resulted in your tank being destroyed, indicated by an explosion and the screen being “cracked”, much better than just saying “game over”.
Reputedly used by the American military for tank training, this game was an instant classic and was converted into home ports for the Atari 2600 and also for PC (DOS) amongst others. I recently downloaded a great ipad port called VectorTankX which is well worth checking out.
Dec 2011 – Atari did eventually notice the similarity between Battlezone and the VectoTankX game, and have had it removed from the ipad store. Shame as this was a great app.
The local arcade near the station where I grew up had a Gradius machine (aka Nemesis), and it was my first experience of a shooter which I had to “learn”. My previous favourites, Galaxians, Galaga, Phoenix etc. all had simple patterns and no power ups, and so were very easy to pick up and you played them more instinctively than by learning movement patterns. Although Phoenix did have a rudimentary end of level challenge, Gradius was also my fist experience of shooters with multiple bosses, that could only be beaten with regular practise and a lot of 10 pence pieces.
Gradius was a side scrolling shooter that like R-Type, had an organic feel, with a mechanical / biological enemies and architecture, including Easter Island heads and flaming dragons. It also had a power up system, but unlike R-Type, was controlled by the user with a novel risk / reward system. By picking up power-up cells, a bar at the bottom of the screen would light up the next power up in the list, starting with speed up, and later lasers, missiles, bombs and a force field. You can select the power up lit, or wait for the next power up which left your ship vulnerable for a while but gave you greater power. Some screens required specific powers, such as the laser for clearing a path on the screen, or homing missiles to clear gun turrets at the top and bottom of the screen, and this added to the challenge.
Playing Gradius
Knowing where to place the ship during certain stages, when to power up, and how to defeat the bosses meant that Gradius required many hours of practise to master. Adding to the difficulty was the fact that your powers were all removed when your ship was destroyed, and in many of the later stages this resulted in certain death due to the time taken to level up again.
Gradius Home Conversions
Gradius NES Box Art
This difficulty level resulted in one of the most famous cheat codes being implemented in certain home versions, the so called “Konami Code”, which was added by a programmer to help with testing, by giving the player full power ups whilst the game is paused. If you have a NES version of the game, try entering “UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, LEFT, RIGHT, RIGHT, B, A. Also well known for the hilarious sequel “Parodius” (Parody + Gradius) which replaced ships and aliens with flying pigs and scantily clad women bosses, and even later sequel “Sexy Parodius” which just had more naked women.
One conversion that shouldn’t work but somehow manages it is on the origibal Gameboy. Given the basic screen resolution and monochrome graphics, a complex games such as Gradius would seem impossible, but Konami pull it off. If you have an original Gameboy I highly recommend the Gradius cart.
Less popular than R-Type, possibly due to the level of difficulty and the investment required to master, but a great shooter worth investigating if you didn’t the first time around.
It was a wet summer holiday in 1984 and I was with my cousin in an arcade on Canvey Island in Essex. Frankie Goes to Hollywood was in the Top 10 with “Two Tribes”, and the famous fight scene between Reagan and Chernenko was blasting out of the video juke box. I looked up from the 2p falls at the voice emanating from a cabinet at the front of the arcade…
Space Ace – Defender of justice, truth and the planet Earth!
I walked over to the crowd forming around the machine, and that was me set for the rest of the summer.
In 1983 Cinematronics released the first Laserdisc based arcade game, Dragon’s Lair. This was a milestone in arcade game technology, effectively allowing a player to direct the actions of a character in a full colour disney style cartoon. The use of a Laserdisk player hidden within the cabinet allowed a film to be “played” on screen through the timing of joystick and key presses. Getting the timing or input wrong resulted in the film switching to a context sensitive death scene, effectively rendering the game to a test of memory.
Ace and Kimberley
Whilst the gameplay was so-so, it was the quality of the animation, which was by Disney veteran Don Bluth, which kept players coming back for more.
Hot on the heels of Dragon’s Lair was 1984’s Space Ace, which in contrast to the first game’s medievel theme, was much more futuristic, and I felt much more fitting with the technology.
You played hero Ace, who has to rescue his girlfriend Kimberley from the evil commander Borf. Borf has a secret weapon, the Infanto Ray, which he uses to zap Ace back to his childhood form, hampering his mission.
Cue much timed jumping between floating platforms, dodging laser blasts and flying spacecraft through obstacles on a journey to save Kimberley and the earth from the evil blue alien (which was also voiced by Don Bluth). Seeing the game through to the end rewarded the player with a feeling of real accomplishment, that they had mastered the machine and seen all the great animation had to offer.
Although badly replicated on a number of platforms as a graphics only based game with no video footage, it has been translated to DVD/CD-ROM and now Blu-Ray, allowing it to be played at home in an approximation of it’s former glory. For traditionalists it is also possible to emulate on a PC if you have a copy of the original laserdisc files and an emulator (see Daphne).
Many retro gamers will remember the Amiga and the Super Nintendo versions, neither of which managed to capture the spirit of the original.
Space Ace – Video Game Marmite?
This is not a game for everyone, and many will state it was a passing fad and rightly so – the format was not long lived. You could claim it’s not even a proper video game, as you are never really in control of your character, you are just learning a pre-defined path through a video. But for me this was a great arcade experience, a blockbuster summer movie that you could actually interact with, and whilst the technology now might seem clunky, and the gameplay limited, it was a experience that no-one who played it could forget.
BBC MicroThe BBC micro has some passionate fans, but it never really managed to generate the sort of passion reserved for some of the more popular home computers of the early 80’s such as the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
Maybe it was the association with the BBC, maybe the fact that it was used in schools, perhaps the price tag put people off, whatever the reason, it just doesn’t seem to attract the kind of fanatic devotion that surrounds other home computers of the time.
I am here to set the story straight, and put my case for why the BBC was a true classic and deserves a loftier place in the annuls of home computer gaming history.
1) The Graphics
mr ee! for the BBC MicroWhilst Spectrum owners had to put up with with a single graphics mode and some fairly horrific attribute clash (only 2 colours could be displayed in any 8 x 8 square of pixels), the BBC had multiple graphics modes, and was able to replicate arcade games of the time very accurately and in full colour. Arcade perfect clones of Frogger, Defender, Pac Man, Space Panic and Donkey Kong were therefore possible, all running at full speed and providing the closest thing to the arcade at home.
2) The Sound
Simple one this, 4 sound channels on the BBC meant that some pretty good sound effects and music could be played simultaneously. The Spectrum could only claim one sound channel, resulting in the strange kind of warbling bleep and white noise mixture that accompanied most Spectrum games. There were add-on packs for the Spectrum in an attempt to address the sound limitations but nothing that really became a standard for gamers.
3) Great arcade conversions
Before copyright infringement was a major issue for games developers, it was possible to produce fairly blatant rip offs of arcade games and not even have to change the name – Defender being a great example on the BBC. The speed, sound and graphical ability of the BBC micro meant that games could be reproduced with a level of accuracy not possible on any other home platform of the time. My personal favourite is Mr Ee!, a perfect rendition of the popular arcafe game Mr Do!, and the main reason for me buying a BBC micro. It may seem basic by today’s standards, but you just couldn’t get this close to the 80’s arcades without braving a trip to Southend.
4) A proper keyboard
Anyone familiar with the Spectrum will declare their love / hate relationship with the rubber keyboard. With almost no feedback, and only a click to tell you you have managed to press a key, it also required a maddening combination of CTRL, SHIFT, ALT and CAPS to achieve the most basic of data entry. Contrast this with the BBC, with a full keyboard more like a word processor, and keys robust enough to take a hammering from unruly schoolkids, it made the perfect programming device, and allowed for great control in multi-key games such as Elite and Revs.
5) Disk drive connectivity
Unlike the Spectrum, which had to make do with temperamental cassettes to load games, the BBC had a proper disk interface. This allowed 3rd party 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives to be utilised in order to store programs or load commercial games in the (relative) blink of an eye. Remember that at this time there were no internal hard drives, so when you turned on your home computer it was like you had never used it on before, with no recollection of your previous visits.
The Spectrum had a micripodrive later in life, as well as a Rom interface, neither of which were a massive commercial success. Chalk one up to the Beeb!
6) BBC Basic
Back in the day before Visual Basic, context sensitive help and predictive typing, there was BBC Basic. A great learning tool, you could type hundreds of lines of code and store them on tape or disk for later use, with a full parser built in to trap errors along the way. Contrast this with the Spectrum and its “parse as you go” coding, and horrible keypress combinations, it took forever to enter even the most simple code. God help anyone who attempted to type in a game from a magazine (yes you could do that), 4 hours later and the code would not work, or the Spectrum would crash and you would lose the lot.
7) Educational value
The main reason for the existance of the BBC Micro was its selection as part of a national programme for education of IT in schools. Many adults in the UK today will site their first real computer experience being with the BBC Micro, learning to program using BASIC or LOGO, or solving puzzles like the Tower of Hanoi.
Beating an alternative offering from Sinclair in the selection process, the BBC Micro can claim unique educational value as a home computer. Fortunate students could convince their parents to shell out the 300-400 quid required buy a BBC Micro, purely for the educational advantage offered to them (not to play games, no that was purely a fringe benefit). Being the local “computer expert” when I was at school, I would often be asked by frustrated parents to come around and “fix” a wayward BBC for them.
I even completed my A level computing project on a BBC Master system, as it was used at my 6th form college.
8) Launchpad for some classic retro games
I have raved about the arcade clones released on the BBC, but it was also home to some classic original games. Take your pick from puzzler Repton, space trading game Elite (released first on the BBC), platformer Frak!, racing simulation Revs and shooter Strykers Run. There were some very loyal software developers for the BBC, most notably Superior Software and MicroPower, who alongside in-house team Acornsoft produced the vast majority of the games on offer.
Of course the BBC could never challenge the Spectrum for the volume or variety of games available, but it did host some unique titles that were not (or could not) be ported to other home computers of that era.
9) Grange Hill
You may think I’m just running out of reasons, but no, the BBC Micro was (probably) the only home computer to ever appear on 80’s childrens TV show Grange Hill. The program was famous for kick starting the careers of stars such as Todd “Mark Fowler” Carty, and er that teacher bloke that was the baddie in Star Wars… and many others.
Respect is due.
10) Fred Harris and Computer Live!
Whilst not a feature of the machine itself, the BBC dedicated an entire TV series to the machine, called Computer Live, featuring eccentric presenter Fred Harris. It was the BBC who commisioned the creation of the machine in the first place, as part of their educational mission to bring computing knowledge to the masses. The show highlighted the many ways a home computer could be used to manage finances, help with word processing, solve logistical problems and even play games (admittedly this was mainly chess). No other machine at the time can boast a companion TV programme!
After dusting off my work in progress MAME cabinet, following a hiatus of about 6 years, I’m determined to get the job completed. After a quick parts inventory I found I actually had most of the bits and pieces I need lying around the house, so set to work.
Cabinet painting
Finished Control Panel
The cabinet itself was half primed, and so just need a quick rub down and the primer applied to the remaining bare MDF surfaces. I then applied the first coat of black latex-based paint that I had used for the control panel – you can see the effect after the first coat below. I used a small paint roller and applied a thin coat to ensure the finish was nice and even. I estimate 3 or 4 coats to do this properly, based on my experience with the control panel. It’s finally starting to look like a proper cabinet!
Control Panel Preparation
The control panel box had previously been primed and painted, and I had primed the control panel as well as drilling the cut-outs for the buttons and joysticks. The perspex overlay was also drilled, and so I only needed to paint the primed panel with black paint. This also took 4 coats to fully cover the white primer.
I had a mixture of Happ buttons from a kit I previously bought, but not enough of the right colours to complete the two colour red/blue look I wanted. I also needed some flat head bolts to hold the joysticks in place, so I ordered the components from Gremlin Solutions. I also took the opportunity to buy some plastic T-Molding to put around the panel and the exposed machine edges. I had already used a router to create the slot for the molding so this will just be pushed in place when the panel is complete.
On receiving the remaining items I started to assemble, using the buttons themselves to hold the already drilled perspex in place. At this stage I realised the holes were a bit snug, and the paint had reduced the diameter of the holes even further, so a Stanley blade was used to chip away the paint, MDF and perspex. Fortunately the rough edges were hidden by the ridge around each button, but next time I will make the holes slightly bigger! Drilling the holes for the joystick bolts was slightly nerve wracking, as I had to drill directly through the perspex, and a crack at this stage would write off the whole panel, but all went well. Slow and steady and not too much pressure, and the drill just sailed through the perspex layer. The flat bolts also do a great job of holding the perspex in place, without snagging on your hand when using the joysticks.
I’m really pleased with the look of the panel, the perspex gives it a professional looking finish, and the buttons and joysticks feel just right – particularly with the micro switches in place, which give just the right level of resistance.
Wiring the control panel
Control Panel Wiring
I already had an Ultimarc Minipac control panel interface, which I had previously bought on ebay as part of a kit. The Minipac came with a pre-wired harness, complete with spade connectors to link directly to the micro switches on each button and on the joysticks. Unfortunately my control panel layout was too big for the pre-wired harness, so some of the connections had to be extended using some additional wire acquired from Maplin. The black “common wire” which provides the power to each switch had some extra spade connections so I could stretch this to fit by just missing out a couple. All power to the PCB is through the keyboard interface to the PC, so no external power source is needed.
Although it looks complicated, the wiring process is relatively straightforward, as long as you take your time. It’s a bit if a birds nest at the moment but when I have tested the panel I will use cable ties to tidy up the harness.
Testing the MAME PC interface
With all the button and joystick switches connected, the panel was ready to test. I am using an old Dell Optimpex PC to run MAME, connected to a widescreen LCD monitor which I hope to mount on a swivel stand to allow horizontal and vertical display options without losing screen resolution. The PCB uses a PS2 type interface (the latest versions use USB connectors) so I had to buy a PS2 to PS2 cable on ebay. Powering on the PC, the PCB seemed to light up, but then the light went off. Using the setup software from Ultimarc, the PC did not seem to recognise the joystick movements or button presses, and a reboot did not help.
So I’m leaving this update on a slight cliffhanger (ooh the suspense), I think there may be a jumper missing from the PCB to tell it to
Close up of micro switches
operate in PS2 mode, or it may be the Dell PC or Windows XP not recognising the PS2 connection. At least I have a great looking control panel, and worse case scenario I need to spend £30 on a new board with a USB link.
In my next update I’m hoping to have a working control panel, and finally have the MAME software running.
I found this game on holiday in Spain, around the same time that I discovered another Konami classic, Track & Field. This was in the early 80’s, a time when games arcades were massively popular and new games were launched seemingly on a weekly basis.
Gyruss arcade game flyerGyruss was a memorable arcade shooter for 2 main reasons, the first being the Tempest-like 3D perspective, where your ship travelled in a circle around the screen, with aliens emerging from the centre and flying out towards you. The aliens also fired various missiles as you spun around the edge of the screen, which was slightly disorientating as you looped left to right and top to bottom. Clearing each section advanced you closer to the next “planet”, flying through the solar system.
The other memorable feature for me was the fantastic music, a version of Bachs Toccata and Fugue that perfectly matched the pace of the action on screen. I would play for the music alone, which seemed to blast out of the speakers on all the cabs I played this on.
Gyruss arcade game screenshot
Between stages there were bonus sections, which Galaga-style allowed you to rack up points for clearing all enemies on a specific flight path. If you managed to shoot the mother ship you would pick up a “double fire” bonus that helped you clear the bonus screen more easily. This was a great risk reward mechanism, as the mother ship was well armed and defended by wingmen, and you had to work for it.
Simple in format but a great score chaser, you could play this all day and not get bored.
Apparently this was released on the NES – And here is a great review by Nintendo Legend. Gyruss was also released on the Atari 2600, which could only be a disappointment after the brilliance of the arcade original. The game even made it onto XBOX Live arcade, remastered in HD.
Retro games reviewed, including 80's arcade machines, classic consoles and early home computers
